When Israel’s courts become ‘instruments of revenge’ against Palestinian citizens
The outcome of two recent murder cases — one of a Jewish-Israeli, the other a Palestinian — has reaffirmed the shallow liberties of second-class citizenship.
For much of the past two years, Palestinian citizens of Israel have been treated as an internal enemy, facing widespread arrests on tenuous charges and heightened restrictions on protesting the mass killing in Gaza. But as the Israeli army unleashed a new degree of brutality in Gaza, and as the Israeli public showed their true colors within a climate of vengeance, what Palestinians inside Israel have experience has echoed a lingering injustice: the events of May 2021.
When Palestinians across Israel rose in solidarity with their kin in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza in what became known as the “Unity Intifada,” Israel responded with a violent crackdown and issued a state of emergency. Large Jewish-Israeli mobs attacked Palestinian homes and cars in so-called “mixed cities,” and border police were deployed into Haifa, Lyd, Jaffa, and Akka, unleashing a wave of arrests, beatings, raids, imprisonment, and trauma that still haunts Palestinians in Israel to this day.
The brutality of that moment has never really receded. For many of Israel’s Palestinian citizens, it remains a reminder of the shallow liberties of second-class citizenship. And two recent court rulings related to the murders of a Jewish-Israeli and a Palestinian have brought the events of 2021 back into sharp relief.
On Sept. 30, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a final petition filed by the family of Musa Hassuna, a 31-year-old Palestinian citizen from Lyd (known in Hebrew as Lod) who was shot dead on May 10, 2021, by armed Jewish residents belonging to a religious-Zionist group known as the Garin Torani (Torah Nucleus). The appeal challenged the Israel Police’s closure of the criminal investigation into five Jewish-Israeli suspects in his murder, which lawyers alleged had been compromised by “incomplete ballistic analyses, failure to interview Palestinian witnesses, and early police statements raising concerns about the investigation’s lack of impartiality.”
The court’s decision was issued the same week that seven Palestinians — all working at a wedding hall that was attacked by an Israeli mob the day after Hassuna’s murder — were sentenced by the Lod District Court to between 12 and 14 years in prison over the killing of 56-year-old Jewish-Israeli Yigal Yehoshua.
During a riot the day after Hassuna was killed, Yehoshua was struck in the head by a stone thrown by a Palestinian while driving his car through Lyd, and later succumbed to his wounds. Yet the court failed to establish which, if any, of the seven Palestinians had thrown the fatal stone, and ignored evidence that interrogators extracted confessions through physical and psychological torture.
Family and relatives attend the funeral of Yigal Yehoshua, a Jewish Israeli who died of his wounds after being attacked by Palestinian citizens during the riots the engulfed the so-called ‘mixed city’ of Lyd, May 18, 2021. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
The Palestinian defendants were charged in June 2021 with murdering Yehoshua as an act of terror; this has allowed Israeli prosecutors to seek a longer sentence for the crime, despite lawyers showing the men had no history or intent of committing a terrorist act. Yehoshua’s family is now demanding an even harsher punishment closer to 25 years.
Khaled Zabarqa, a lawyer who represented and supported families in both cases, called the contrast a disgrace. The Israeli police, intelligence, and prosecution worked together, he said, “to accuse and condemn the Palestinians because they are Palestinians, and to defend the Jewish shooters [and allow them] to get away with murder.”
For Tayseer Shabaan, an attorney and a member of the Lyd local committee who supported the families of dozens of youth protecting their neighborhood against armed Jewish settler gangs in May 2021, the climate of extreme anti-Palestinian racism in Jewish-Israeli society and formal institutions has deeply influenced the courts. The ruling in the Yehoshua murder case, he said, was part of an atmosphere of intimidation and punitive zeal: unusually long sentences, harsh rulings, and judges acting as an extension of the army.
And if corners of the Palestinian community in Israel once saw the judicial system as a final safeguard against state abuse, since October 7, that perception has collapsed. “Israeli judges brought the fight in Gaza to the courtrooms,” Shabaan argued. “The courts have become an instrument of revenge.”
‘Death to Arabs’ in the courtroom
51-year-old Khaled Hassuna, a Palestinian from Lyd who is from the extended family of Musa Hassuna, received the longest sentence of the group. “I was shocked — we never expected it to be so long because the court couldn’t prove any of them threw the stone,” his wife, Amal, told +972 Magazine.
To add insult to injury, Jewish-Israeli high schoolers showed up to the courtroom for the final session under the auspices of the Garin Torani, chanted “Death to Arabs” at the Palestinian families and lawyers, and proceeded to shove and spit on them. Rather than intervene, the court security personnel screamed at the Palestinian families and forced them to exit through the back doors.
Hassuna has been in Israeli custody for four and a half years and has endured prolonged physical and mental abuse. “My life stopped the day they arrested him,” Amal said. On one occasion, according to Amal, he was interrogated for 17 hours straight, his hands cuffed behind his back, and denied food, water, and his pain medication prescribed after undergoing abdominal surgery two months before his arrest.
Palestinian prisoners held at Israel’s Ofer Prison near Jerusalem, in the occupied West Bank, August 28, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
According to their lawyers, Hassuna and the six other defendants were forced to sign documents during their interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, admitting that they threw stones at Yehoshua’s car. Amal insisted that under such brutal conditions, anyone would confess to the crime of which they were accused.
The emotional and financial toll on the Hassuna family has been devastating. Amal was forced to sell the family’s house to cover the legal fees. Hassuna missed the wedding of their only daughter. And because Palestinian prisoners, including Israeli citizens, were denied visits and phone calls after October 7, Hassuna only learned that his mother had passed away on the day of the final sentencing, a month and a half after her death.
Observing her husband in court, Amal noted that he had not only lost weight, but had “withered on the inside.” Now, Amal lives in fear that her husband might not survive the harsh treatment in Israeli prison.
Of the seven Palestinians convicted of killing Yehoshua, two are residents of the West Bank who were working at the Palestinian-owned wedding hall in Lyd where the clashes that night took place. Unlike Hassuna and his co-defendants with Israeli citizenship, they were forced to attend court alone.
Israeli police escort right-wing settlers as they attack and clash with Palestinians in the city of Lod/Lyd, May 12, 2021. (Oren Ziv/Activestills)
Ahmad Danoon, a 29-year-old from the town of Rantis sentenced to 13 years in prison, has been cut off from his family since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began. Danoon had found employment at the wedding hall to support his parents and nine siblings, due to the unemployment crisis in the West Bank, and was arrested with the others on suspicion of causing the death of Yehoshua.
Before October 7, Israel routinely issued permits to his mother, Maryam Eryahi, and the rest of the family to visit Danoon in prison, but has rarely done so since, and only to attend some court sessions. Eryahi recounted to +972 the crushing blow of being denied a permit to attend the final court session, a moment she had dreaded for over four years.
Watching a video of the court session, Eryahi saw her son enter the room and repeatedly turn toward the crowd, searching for his mother. The scene pained her so acutely that she broke down and fainted. Her presence, she explained, had always brought Danoon visible relief: “Every time I attended a court session, he would come in and start looking around for me. Once he saw me, his face would light up.”
Despite the heartache, Eryahi is reluctant to view herself as a victim, claiming that her son’s situation is merely “a drop in the sea” compared to the wider suffering of the Palestinian people and the unimaginable horrors in Gaza.
‘The state’s goal is to make life miserable for Palestinians’
Systemic racism and institutional hostility against Palestinian citizens of Israel are not new, but they have become more entrenched. “Since the Second Intifada, hostilities have steadily increased,” Zabarqa said. “Even before October 7, we were not living in a legal system that was fair and impartial. It has always been racist, but in the last 25 years, it has become a constant escalation.”
Such structural discrimination is obvious in the rulings of Israeli courts, but also manifests in daily life. The Lyd municipality, Zabarqa explained, warns of the “threat of Arabs,” noting how many homes or businesses Palestinians have purchased in the city. This climate of hostility has been reinforced by Israeli media, which often portrays Palestinians as a “fifth column.” The result is not only state persecution but an informal economic boycott that has devastated Palestinian businesses and deepened their isolation.
However, the most visible escalation against Palestinian citizens since the Unity Intifada — and especially after October 7 — has been Israel’s assault on freedom of _expression_. Peaceful protests condemning the genocide in Gaza have been met with excessive police force, arbitrary arrests, and public humiliation, a clear intimidation tactic to deter any dissent or display of Palestinian national belonging.
Israeli police arrest a Palestinian woman in Karmiel, northern Israel, July 3, 2024. (David Cohen/Flash90)
Online speech has become another front of repression: the Israeli police routinely use Palestinian citizens’ social media posts as grounds for interrogation and persecution. In October, Israel extended the administrative detention of a Palestinian by another six months over what his lawyer says was his client’s conversation with ChatGPT, setting a new and dangerous precedent.
For Suhad Bishara, the legal director of the Haifa-based legal center Adalah, the crackdown on freedom of speech and protest since October 7 created a pervasive “chilling effect” that quickly drove Palestinians to self-censor, even in private. The judiciary began monitoring social media heavily, university disciplinary committees stepped up their scrutiny of students and faculty, and police interrogations grew more violent.
“We witnessed unprecedented criminalization of posts on social media,” Bishara said. “It’s like there was one judicial system that existed before October 7 and another that existed after.”
When Palestinian citizens did go out to protest the Gaza genocide, police routinely dispersed demonstrations in cities like Haifa that are fully legal under Israeli law, even when their slogans pose no threat to public order. Officers have also attacked and arrested protesters holding Palestinian flags, despite having no legal grounds to do so.
Arrested protestors often face verbal and physical abuse, and some have required hospitalization. Shabaan, who conducts weekly visits to Israeli prisons, has gathered testimonies of Palestinian citizens of Israel enduring beatings, psychological torture, and medical neglect, noting the intentional spread of diseases like scabies.
Yet in most cases, no indictments are filed against demonstrators, and courts release detainees without any conditions — a pattern Bishara views as pure intimidation. Police, she added, justify arrests under the vague pretext of “disturbing public order,” a catch-all used to silence dissent.
Israeli police attack protesters during a demonstration against the war in Gaza, in Haifa, May 30, 2024. (Flash90)
Shaaban fears that police violence against Palestinians in Israel will soon not even reach the courts, and police will simply close cases without investigation. “The police now effectively handle the country,” he said. Today, he argued, Palestinians’ rights depend on “the mood of police officers and judges,” mirroring the vulnerability of West Bank Palestinians living at the whim of Israeli settlers and soldiers.
In Lyd, Palestinian residents report routine harassment — from Jewish-Israeli civilians drawing weapons on them, to police raids that destroy their personal property — and bureaucratic obstruction when they try to file complaints. Police send people back and forth between stations to “exhaust and confuse” them, Shabaan continued, until they give up.
Palestinians’ survival, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or inside Israel, is based on “pure luck,” he concluded. “The state’s goal is to make life miserable for Palestinians and drive them to leave.”
In pursuit of international protection
If the Unity Intifada of May 2021 and the genocide marked key turning points in Israel’s suppression of its Palestinian citizens, they also exposed a broader truth: The same Zionist ideology undergirds Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in all of historic Palestine, regardless of their civil status.
As domestic protections for Palestinian citizens collapse — with courts imposing cruel sentences, suppressing dissent, and failing to hold state actors accountable for physical abuse — some advocates argue that the only promising course of action is to pivot entirely toward international protective mechanisms.
In March 2022, representatives from Adalah and the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel appeared before the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (CoI-OPTI). For the first time, an international body was established to examine Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinian citizens, alongside Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
The commission has continued to publish regular reports to the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly; its most recent, issued in August, highlighted the issue of discriminatory land and housing policies affecting Palestinian citizens.
According to Bishara, Palestinian organizations must continue to advance a unified advocacy effort to expose the discriminatory system that governs all Palestinians, regardless of citizenship. This demands gathering evidence of systemic rights violations for international bodies like the International Criminal Court and the UNHRC — but also an intense diplomatic campaign to pressure European and Arab nations to implement concrete protective measures.
As long as Israel continues to treat its own Palestinian citizens as an internal threat, Bishara warned, the state-led crackdown will continue. “The future is not looking good,” she said. “Every path the country takes leads away from respecting human rights.”